Lyrical Subject

The lyrical subject is a generalized concept denoting the bearer of utterance, consciousness, and experience in a lyric work; it is broader than the 'lyrical hero.' If the lyrical hero is a relatively integral image endowed with a biography and character, the lyrical subject embraces all forms of the speaker's presence in lyric: the lyrical hero proper, the 'lyric I,' the lyric 'we' (the voice of a community), the role hero (the mask in whose name the poet speaks), and 'non-subjective' forms, in which experience is expressed without a direct 'I' — through landscape, description, meditation. The differentiation of subject forms in lyric was developed by theorists of the poetic mode (notably Boris Korman). The analysis of the lyrical subject makes it possible to describe precisely the mode of expression of authorial consciousness and to avoid the naive identification of the poet with the speaker. A diversity of subject forms is characteristic of the mature lyric of Ivan Franko, Lesia Ukrainka, Pavlo Tychyna, and Lina Kostenko.